Breakthrough Portends Cure For the Common Cold 180
breadboy21 writes with this excerpt from the Independent:
"Scientists have been able to show for the first time that the body's immune defenses can destroy the common cold virus after it has actually invaded the inner sanctum of a human cell, a feat that was believed until now to be impossible. The discovery opens the door to the development of a new class of antiviral drugs that work by enhancing this natural virus-killing machinery of the cell. Scientists believe the first clinical trials of new drugs based on the findings could begin within two to five years."
Flash game (Score:3, Interesting)
while reading the article i couldn't help thinking that the immune system would make a cool Flash game.
Re:This is fantastic news! (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder however how many flu symptoms are the effect of your body's defenses, and whether any of them will be worsened by such a drug
The cytokine storm that causes fatalities with some influenza variants is due (roughly speaking) to the body breaking down the virus too quickly, swamping its ability to dispose of the byproducts. This looks like it would cause your body to break down the virus faster, which could be problematic.
Re:Totally wrong (Score:2, Interesting)
ah, but there was a Next Gen episode where Data was practicing sneezing (to more emulate humans) and Wes asks him if he has a cold. Data responds "a cold what?", and Wes says something to the effect that it's a disease people used to get.
Why oh why do I remember this?
Re:Flash game (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.kongregate.com/games/CellCraft/cellcraft [kongregate.com]
completely wrong way to think about colds (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/05/opinion/05ackerman.html [nytimes.com]
i just read this last month
the common cold is an immune system overreaction. the virus does not cause the cold, our own bodies overreact to the cold, and that causes ALL symptoms. which explains why cold medicines work: they modulate the immune response, they don't actually fight the virus
so the virus comes in, borrows some cellular machinery for a few days, makes a few copies, and then leaves. our body's response is to call out the entirety of the navy, the marines, the army, the air force, the cavalry, mortar batteries, drone predators, and tactical nuclear strikes. for a crime which amounts to a homeless guy squatting in an unused home for a day or two
Re:Two to five YEARS??? (Score:2, Interesting)
Can't say I know how long approval in the UK will take either, and I agree that if anything does come of this it will be at the long end of their estimate at the soonest.
at the soonest:
lab prototype design and lead modification (now) - 2-5yrs
clinical trials - +5yrs
regulatory approval and marketing - +2yrs
and given at any stage the project could just break down with delays.. hope you'll be holding onto that cold for a while
Re:NO! (Score:3, Interesting)
It's possible that there is a good reason why that mechanism is not already more powerful.
Re:Two to five YEARS??? (Score:3, Interesting)
Does anyone know whether these procedure are optimised to reduce the number of casualties or to reduce the number of potential lawsuits.
In other words, is the main problem legal/political rather than technical ?
Re:Misleading in Title and Content (Score:1, Interesting)
Blame the system really. By creating all the hype, they are making it possible to get funding and get paid to work.
Re:This is fantastic news! (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't like antibiotics though. This is a naturally occurring chemical that your body produces. The human body has been fighting colds for ages and they haven't evolved into a serious threat, nor will it. It's key to survival is the fact that it doesn't kill you. That way it can spread and infect more people, thus insuring its survival. However, that said, what effects throwing in an excess of antibodies that your body would normally produce does to the immune response over time is another question entirely. Could the body come to assume there was a magical load of antibodies going to come on its own (the drug) and decide not to waste the resources to make any of its own anymore? That's more my worry. (sort of like how a certain type of diabetes is induced rather than genetic)
Re:completely wrong way to think about colds (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:NO! (Score:4, Interesting)
Nice rant. No, actually, completely irrelevant rant. This research shows how your body breaks down viruses and provides a potential means of stimulating this response. If anything, it makes it harder for viruses to adapt, because they're faced with exactly the same defence mechanism as without this boost, it's just more powerful so they are destroyed faster and have less time to adapt.
You tried to label a comment as "completely irrelevant" but still you demonstrate you fail to understand the basic aspects pertaining to evolution. The thing is, "making it harder to adapt" does not, nor it can ever mean "making it impossible to adapt". They will adapt. It will only take a single virus to survive a stimulated response for it to replicate and propagate. With all the other unadapted virus out of the picture, the replicas of the adapted virus will in essence have an entire ecosystem at their disposal, where they will freely propagate, infect and replicate. Your poor understanding of this subject is what lead incompetent health officials and irresponsible patients to contribute to the development of the so called superbugs [wikipedia.org], which are no laughing matter.
But hey, keep spewing uneducated drivel and accuse those who demonstrate a better understanding of the subject as making "completely irrelevant rants". Meanwhile nature does work in spite of your lack of understanding.
Actually, in this case, the person you're replying to is right. If the stimulated response is causing your body to use the exact same method of attack against the viruses, but just cause it to act faster, than it is lowering the chance for the virus to adapt. After all, the ones who are susceptible to the immune system response are already being killed by this response, and are getting a greater number of generations in which to develop a mutation that might make them more resistant to it. If you can make the immune system kill them faster using the same method, then yes, they could still adapt, but now you're giving them less time to do it. Assuming it's even possible for them to develop a mutation that can stop it, which is not necessarily a given.
Re:NO! (Score:3, Interesting)
A pathogen is like a person, put a mild poison in their water supply and they will build an immunity, inject a 30ml vial of ricin into their aorta and they will die in seconds. Flooding a person's body with almost enough vancomycin to kill them is going to kill pretty much anything else inside of them. But give the same person a single dose of oxacillin and it will just kill off the weakest and least resistant of the bacteria allowing the less vulnerable to thrive and spread to new generations. This is why you should always swallow all of your antibiotics, even if you do not need it. The analogy holds for virus as well, if a virus mutates into a sort-of resistant strain, it is much better if we give it enough antibodies to kill all of it than provide evolutionary pressure to make a fully resistant version.
We are discussing biology, not making lines for Jurassic Park 4, life can always find a way, but if you kill it quickly, its evolutionary choices are limited. MRSA was caused by low doses of antibiotics by proscribing it to people who don't need it and not supervising them to take it properly, high doses of Meticillin would have killed its great great grandparents too, which were still partially vulnerable to the penicillin family, not just pruning its less resilient great aunts and uncles. If someone's got antibodies in their body anyway (as we all do), it is good to encourage the body to pump out enough to thoroughly kill viruses before they iterate and evolve into something that resists your antibodies, just like how mankind betrayed itself in its abuse of the Penicillin family.
Re:This is fantastic news! (Score:4, Interesting)
"In any immunology textbook you will read that once a virus makes it into a cell, that is game over because the cell is now infected. At that point there is nothing the immune response can do other than kill that cell," said Leo James, who led the research team.
But they showed a mechanism by which the body's cells can destroy the virus before the cell becomes controlled by the virus but after the virus has entered the cell. This is quite unprecedented as it allows that cell to recover, and therefore reduces the need for the immune system to have to launch attacks on our own cells, as occurs in a normal immune response and becomes uncontrolled in a cytokine storm.
In other words, this looks promising!